


Self-referential topics

by yourlibrarian



Category: Fandom - Fandom
Genre: Fandom history, Meta, Nonfiction, Other, Tropes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-12
Updated: 2019-08-12
Packaged: 2020-08-23 20:53:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 504
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20220508
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/yourlibrarian/pseuds/yourlibrarian
Summary: Thoughts about reboot culture and the most fanficcy trope.





	Self-referential topics

I had a thought the other day about my particular fondness for time loop stories. It struck me that this trope is fanfic about fanfic itself. Not every fanfic, of course, but many fics do focus on exactly what time loop stories do, which is repeat a scene, an episode, or a storyline and then change it. Each story tries out new possibilities each time. Even AU stories often follow familiar tropes, which rerun some familiar scenarios with small changes.

I think that this is what I like about time loop stories (I say "time loop" because they can be longer than a day, sometimes weeks, or even re-running an earlier part of one's life unexpectedly). Time loop stories can be about many things: learning a lesson; a character changing their stripes; learning how to see a situation in a different way; or becoming romantically involved with someone they didn't notice before. But a favorite fillip is when it's more than one person stuck in the loop, which gets discovered along the way. To me, that's just a representation of what fans do when they're together in a fandom -- the teamwork that reworks canon in better ways.

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ 

I watched the first episode of the new 90210 RPF, even though I've never seen even a single episode of the show. I was curious about how they approached it. It's become rather common now for actors to do projects based on convention appearances, which is how the show starts out. But the show looks to be about more than that, simply setting most of the episode at a reunion con (though taking as much license with how cons are run as with their personas). 

But generally speaking, it's like they're mining their own fanfic for the plotlines. I imagine it's the same as how I felt jarred by a bit of dialogue from the 3rd episode of Veronica Mars, which seemed to be a shoutout to fic writers who had written a certain pairing. 

The same day I read an article about benefits for authors who [use Amazon's publishing imprints](https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2019/08/amazons-plan-take-over-world-publishing/595630/), and also how Amazon's strategy relies a lot on voracious genre readers. It's been clear for ages that self-publishing has allowed authors (many of them former fanfic writers) to find audiences that publishers denied them for ages.

> [A] traditional publishing house probably would never have accepted their manuscripts because their books were too dirty. Friends who wrote romance for traditional publishing houses had to take out kinky sex scenes, they told me, because the publishers weren’t comfortable with the content. Only after traditional publishing houses saw that Alexa Riley’s kinky books sold well did they approach the authors and allow them to keep whatever they wanted.

  
[Wattpad is literally doing this](https://cheddar.com/media/wattpads-fan-created-stories-are-becoming-streaming-franchises), using fandom activity as a test market. But for anyone reading or participating in fandom for a decade or more, "reboot culture" isn't the only thing that seems to be recycling content. An awful lot in entertainment now has a deja vu quality to it. 


End file.
